


six people walk up to a roof

by loveontop



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: don't read this it's ridiculous, honestly there is no plot it's just random dialogue i guess, i imagine it as a play or something, not even that interesting, what's that word for when you dump random words into a docs file
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 12:37:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18135845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveontop/pseuds/loveontop
Summary: charles just wanted to sweep the rooftop. terry just wanted to read his book. life had other plans.(SERIOUS WARNING: brief, stupid jokes about jumping off a roof are made. if that is not your thing/might trigger you don't read this.)(regular warning: this is a waste of your time. read something legit.)





	six people walk up to a roof

It’s not like he doesn’t love his kids, little bundles of joy and light and irreversible insomnia. Terry loves them all right, but every once in a while (when breathing starts becoming a tiny bit necessary) he walks up to the roof. Every time he’s met by the same scene: the janitor mumbling about dirt and scolding chip bags.

 

“Hey, man. Can you do me a favor and not let anyone come up while I’m here? Terry wants to do some reading.”

 

Charles’s chest swells with purpose. He grips his broom proudly and his eyes start shining, the way they would shine if he found a twenty-dollar bill and under the bill a plate of fresh black-bean tapenade with a side of garlic bread. “You can count on it. I won’t let a single person come through this door,” he says, a second before letting Gina come through the door; no one in the audience is shocked.

 

“Well, hello there,” she strolls over to where Terry stands, eyeing him up and down. Her eyes turn glacier blue, predatory and obscenely cold in contrast to her face, eyes that won’t let Terry move in fear of being disqualified. “I’m Gina, the new neighbour. And you are… A king? A model? A demon in a sizzling-hot vessel?”

 

The air around Terry becomes foggy with confusion. “I’m Terry,” he frowns.

 

“Mkay, Terry. I’m just here to warn you to close the door to your apartment,” she chuckles derisively. “I’m, like, a kleptomaniac, or whatever.” She shrugs, but Terry’s frown upgrades a level, because he’s not new to the building but he’s never stepped foot on this side of the roof, and suddenly he’s grateful his kids are too young for stairs (a place like this could leave some scars). 

 

On top of everything, the floral print is familiar: he takes a step back. “Are you wearing my wife’s blouse?”

 

“Wife? Oh, Terry, you better not have meant that.” The betrayal splattered on Gina’s face is real. “But, yes. I am. I did warn you to close the door, though. So.”

 

There seems to be no alternative but to give up on this conversation, Terry decides, thinking to himself that this woman is a bit too entertaining for him to leave, despite his best intuitions, despite the loud warnings shooting through his veins. “Alright. Listen, I’m just gonna go sit over there, can you not steal this book?”

 

“I can try, Ter-bear. No promises though,” and another chuckle. “If you need me to apply your tanning lotion, I’ll be smoking by the end of the roof.” As she slides over to the edge, looking down to judge outfits underneath her breath, Charles lets another woman come through the door. She takes a step the other way, though, while Terry prays to god she doesn’t realise she’s not alone and turns around to make noise.

 

His prayer lasts a second at best.

 

“Oh.” She aims for a smile and scores a nervous twitch. “Are you here to smoke, too?”

 

“Nah,” Terry says, filtering his annoyance before pointing to Gina, figuring that smoke is smoke no matter what’s burning. “Be careful, though. She steals shit.”

 

“We all have our little things,” the woman flattens her suit, tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She’s jittery now. Terry doesn’t see why she’d continue the small talk, but she does, and she seems a hell of a lot more normal than Gina, who for all intents and purposes is  _ not  _ trying and failing to blow smoke in the shape of her own face. “For me, I can’t accept or acknowledge any of the problems I have.”

 

“What problems do you have?”

 

“None, why?”

 

Terry slams his book shut. “But you just said you can’t accept or acknowledge any of the problems you have.”

 

The lady shifts her weight onto her other leg and jabs a finger into the air. “Listen, big guy. I don’t accept them because I don’t  _ have _ them. If I had them, I would know.” She’s about a meter shorter and her hair is tied with a Hello Kitty tie, but Terry is terrified.

 

Gina appears behind her, a panther. “Is this human binder your wife, Terry? Because you could do better, full offense.”

 

The woman rolls her eyes, starts to say how big of a compliment “human binder” actually is, and Terry takes the smartest decision of his life by, yet again, separating himself from the exchange.

 

Gina narrows her eyes, clicks her tongue like she’s contemplating the entirety of the universe and it’s not looking good; the other woman might as well not exist. A slap to the face would sting less. “If I jump off the roof, do you think I could snatch that flower pot while I’m falling?”

 

“Whatever.” Amy Santiago isn’t having it. She’s known this building is full of freaks for a long time, ever since Peralta and a little man were crawling on the floor of the lobby ‘looking for a sugar cube’. Maybe she’s known for even longer, from the moment they accepted her tenant application, and her apartment was right opposite to the twins who were rumored to have the boy’s boss tied up in their living room. But she’s never encountered this woman, who doesn’t look bad but she sure looks evil. “Can you hurry up with the suicide, and take your weed with you?”

 

Gina’s eyebrows shoot up. Terry sees her taking a step back, tilting her head, and wonders if Sharon would be okay with moving out and if they could do it this precise second, instantly, before Gina drops a curse and the world stops breathing. “Listen, guys,” he stands up, and both women move to each of his sides. Sometimes he forgets how many heart attacks his sudden movements have caused, not exactly the type of body that goes by unnoticed. “Can you go jump over there? Terry is trying to read, and you’re blocking the sunlight.”

 

“Mhm,” Gina hums and they both step into their original places, no mind paid. Terry slams his book and moves his chair away, never far enough because far enough would be Colombia. “You sure you don’t want a hit? You look tenser than Britney when I challenged her to a dance off.”

 

“I’ll stick to cigarettes, thanks.”

 

Gina doesn’t understand the aversion. She thinks it might be starting to hit when she steps out of her body and sees herself caring to ask why the woman is so stressed, resisting the urge to slap herself from this new dimension. That tends to make for exhausting explanations that she eventually ends in cliffhangers, because people like this lady in a pantsuit aren’t all that smart, and definitely don’t qualify for out-of-body experiences, and because they never understand their minds instantly go to the easier explanations, like insanity or hallucinations, babying themselves into ignorance.

 

“I’m not stressed,” the talking blur huffs, does something weird with its face as if trying out the brand new concept of nonchalance. “No problems here.”

 

But it has to be admitted: she’s enough of a freak to catch Gina’s attention. “There has to be a problem for someone to leave their house in those shoes. Look, if you were robbed, it was me, my bad. I’m a kleptomaniac—”

 

“That’s cool,” she chimes in, inpatient and glitching, “but I said there’s no problem, okay?” Yet here she is, lighting the first cigarette. One drag and her shoulders are on the floor. “I’m just here bec— hey, is that my watch on your wrist?”

 

Head thrown back, Gina groans. “You have to close your door,” she widens her eyes at her, twirls on her heels and walks away. The lady follows her: Terry praises the lord. And as he’s sitting there, looking up, arms out like Jesus on the cross for just a second, a man comes and sits on his lap.

 

“What the hell, man?”

 

The guy jumps up with a shriek.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re here to die, too,” Terry says, straightening himself and trying to look past what just happened, because the other man doesn’t even look embarrassed. “There’s already a lady in denial of her problems and some janky thief with my wife’s clothes.”

 

“Cool, cool, cool, cool,” the man scratches the back of his neck, leans in with a conspiratorial smile, about to let Terry in on today’s secret mission. “I’m a compulsive liar.”

 

“For real?”

 

“Nah.” 

 

Terry’s head drops for half a millisecond, in annoyance, in tiredness and desire to sink into the ground and land on the middle of his living room. “So yes, then.”

 

“Yes what?”

 

“Yes, you’re a compulsive liar.”

 

“Liar?” The man puts a hand to his chest in all dramaticness. “Me? Nope, no way.” 

 

“But you just said you were!”

 

“Dude, I didn’t say anything.” And he looks worried about Terry’s mental health, but Terry doesn’t look into it because, at this point, he’s a little bit worried as well. “I didn’t talk to you— I’m not even  _ here _ . This is someone else.”

 

“Alright. Alright man, go smoke over there.”

 

“What? I’m not here to smoke. I’m here because I can fly.”

 

“You go do that, little man. Go do that  _ over there _ .”

 

“I will. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

 

What now. “Huh?”

 

The man turns his head to the side, gaze questioning and almost incriminatory, like Terry is one wrong word away from blowing his own cover. “You know, last night?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Come on,” he comes a step closer. “We had dinner at that fancy place with the lights and the olive oil.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“We went back to your place, had sex—”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Long story short, you asked me to call you, and that’s what I’m gonna do. Tomorrow.”

 

“You won’t call me, man. You’re here to jump off.”

 

“Who told you that? I’m here to see if I float.”

 

“You know what? Go float, go jump into the void, whatever. Terry’s gonna sit here and read his damn book.”

 

And he sits, and he falls on his ass. Life rewinds itself and sees Gina walk away with his chair fifteen seconds ago, leaving stupid Terry to contemplate his stupid life choices and rub his stupid back as the man walks away.

 

“ _ Bonjour _ , y’all,” Jake Peralta says. “Can you scoot over to the side? I’m gonna jump with my paraglider.”

 

The lady with the ponytail looks around him even though his oxygen zone is none of her business. “Where’s your paraglider?”

 

“It got stolen.”

 

She hums, nods to the woman next to her. “Must’ve been this one. She’s like a pickpocketer, shoplifter, heist-er, whatever.”

 

“Look who’s talking, miss I-Won’t-Face-My-Issues.”

 

“Joke’s on you, I don’t  _ have  _ any issues.”

 

Right before they start throwing hands, Terry walks over and the conflict is gone. “You three are wearing my wife’s clothes,” he declares, demanding an answer with what has become now a permanent frown.

 

“Excuse me,” the other man says, taking off his coat, “but  _ I _ am not.” Yet the coat falls to reveal a floral skirt, same print as Gina’s blouse and matching the buttons of the woman’s blazer.

 

“You’re wearing a skirt,” Terry says. His voice doesn’t move.

 

“But it certainly ain’t yours, mister.”

 

“No? Whose is it, then?”

 

The man laughs for a second; his face goes stone-cold as he answers, “It’s my wife’s.”

 

“You’re married?” Charles interjects from behind Terry’s back. “But you just said you’d call Terry tomorrow!”

 

“Ugh, come here, you weirdo,” Gina says, hugging Charles with her fingertips and slipping away with his broom and his hat.

 

Before anything else happens, a slim woman clad in leather pants and a blouse like Gina’s strides into the roof. Carrying a sniper rifle over her shoulder, she scans the room without moving, black eyes, black clothes, pink gloves. “Sup,” she blurts at last, paying no one any mind and starting to position herself on the ledge.

 

“She’s wearing Sharon’s clothes too,” Terry complains, earning himself Gina’s groans and Charles’s pat on his back.

 

The newcomer turns her head. “What’s wrong with him.” Punctuation is below her, obviously.

 

“His wife sells clothes,” Jake says, mimicking Terry’s tone and pretending to flex, “but looks like he doesn’t like it when people wear them.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> it was your decision to read this thing man, i'm not apologizing. don't eat meat and stop using plastic bags ok byebye take care kids


End file.
